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Legions of the Sun—Now Available
The companion anthology to “War of Words” is now available.Read More
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The Drama of War-Time Poetry
The performance of “War of Words” went off without a hitch last night in the Black Box Theater at the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities. Having written the script, I was surprised by how moving it was—how the century-old poems sprang to life with such power and subtlety from the mouths of the five actors. Among the many enlivening elements were smoothly delivered accents—Hardy’s Dorset English, Apollinaire’s bon vivant playfulness, the taut Germanic sounds of Trakl, and the sly Chicagoan cadences of Carl Sandburg.Read More
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Poetic Cleansing
I want to recommend the experience of reading and comparing two essays, a brief one by D. A. Powell and a longish one by Ron Silliman. The two pieces have similar titles — respectively, “Unburying Amy Lowell” and “Unerasing Early Levertov“* — but they couldn’t be more different in their aims and impacts. Powell offers a genuinely appreciative reappraisal of Amy Lowell as a poet; Silliman focuses on Levertov’s career, focusing on her strong but derivative early work to explain how she ended up in what, for him, is paradigm-shifting anthology (Donald Allen’s The New American Poetry).Read More
Joseph Hutchison, Colorado Poet Laureate 2014-2019, has published 20 collections of poems and edited or co-edited three poetry anthologies. He currently directs two master’s-level programs for University College at the University of Denver: Professional Creative Writing and Arts & Culture Management. Joe lives with his wife, Melody Madonna, in the mountains southwest of Denver, Colorado, the city where he was born. 
